Strasbourg, 1 September 2022
A delegation led by the Ministry of Social development has visited the Conference of International NGOs (CINGO) at the Council of Europe. It was composed of a dozen female and male members, senior officials from the Ministry and the Municipality of Amman, the Governorate of Jerash, as well as association leaders. The visit was organised by Expertise France in the framework of the EU Social Protection Support Programme in Jordan.
The aim of the trip to Eastern France was to see good practices of partnerships between associations and public authorities in the field of social cohesion.
The CINGO presentation focused first on the CoE and its own role, and then on a substantial overview of the Code* of Good Practice for Civil Participation in Decision-Making, the experiences made in the Member States, salient points from reports made in this field over the years, to conclude on work currently underway, such as the bepartforum.org website.
About three quarters of the way through the programme, an exchange of views and of questions took over, both on Jordan’s regional context and on the personal motivation to work for the common good. The dialogue with the Jordanians concluded with a short voting exercise on the main reasons for practicing participatory democracy.
The above-mentioned Code* is a CINGO Initiative dating back to 2009. Its second edition was produced and relaunched in partnership with the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities in 2019, which in itself was a productive exercise of dialogue.
Christoph Spreng, CINGO Vice-president